... and this means Google has a strong incentive to prevent the public from getting trapped in walled gardens (facebook, iOS, etc).
This a good thing, as it means they're powerful advocates for a more open internet.
This a good thing, as it means they're powerful advocates for a more open internet.
The 'open internet' is often just a reverse walled garden. Things used to be locked down on your device, now they are locked down on remote servers where you couldn't even pry them out if you tried hard & ignored the law. (Unless you're the US government, in that case things have gotten much easier.)
The only advantage is that there is no middle-man between you and using any app (website) you want. But no company has ever tried to restrict web access on its devices, so where's the advantage?
And judging Google by its products: Google+ actually seems a lot more closed to me than Facebook (hardly any API?). Android itself is open source, but it is hardly about pushing the open web either. (At least it stopped pushing Flash)
Some major innovations from Android have inspired sister projects for the open web, like http://webintents.org/
Also, I think you're misinterpreting the term "open internet" ; it usually means "open" for the developer, not the user. However, it's still better for users, as competition between open standards and technologies means that they usually get the best solutions (exceptions being things like h.264) This is certainly better than the classic walled garden where one company gets to decide what developers may or may not use.
In short, it's better because it's: - unfiltered (mature content, etc.) - unrestricted in terms of technologies used - partially open for users
Their mail and calendaring apps sure don't, for example.
At this point Google is big enough that generalizing about how they make money is a bit pointless, because they have a bunch of different revenue streams. The only commonality is advertising.
But that's not stopping them from signing deals to get Chrome drive-by installed on users' computers, say. Again, it's a big place. Some of it is still all about "do no evil", while other parts seem to be run by scumbags. Pretty good for a large corporation, all things considered, but not exactly all wonderful.